


.33 Caliber Love Story

by PaperKing



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Frerard, M/M, also im sorry that there are so many triggers in this story but i had to put it down, gerard isnt the one doing the bad stuff to frank, once they get to the romance their relationship is cute i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-09-26 21:15:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20396260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperKing/pseuds/PaperKing
Summary: Frank had lived for almost 15 years in a nightmare created by his own father, from which he never woke up. Amid the pain of years of abuse and despotism, Frank meets Gerard, and fatally falls in love more than would be wise for himself and him.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [.33 Caliber Love Story](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/518072) by Me (shakesqueer). 

> I posted this fanfic on Orkut in Portuguese in 2009, but it had been deleted with the fall of the site; but over these 10 years, I saw a few people people commenting on it here and there on blogs and facebook post, it has been reposted without my permission, has been plagiarized, has inspired another fanfic. So I decided to repost, but I rewrote several parts that had me cringing when I reread it, since I wrote this thing when I was a preteen, but I tried to keep the same spirit as the original, because I was closer to Frank's age then than now LOL anyway, I hope someone will like it e_e also, please, excuse my awkward English.

I didn't realize anything but my compulsive crying. Although it had been a long time since I was no longer a child, I’d never stopped fearing the nights when I would see him enter that damn door. Over the years, the pain would never end, not even diminish even a little. Unable to contain my sobs as I held my own legs, I stared at him, with his back to me, digging for his own shirt on the floor of my messy room.

"Stop crying, Frank," he said sharply, finding the shirt and dressing it up without looking at me. "Try to look like a man at least once in your life."

I tried to stifle my weeping. Not because of what he'd said, but because I couldn't breathe properly anymore. Along with shortness of breath came more sobs and more pain.

"Won’t you ever get sick of doing this to me?" I muttered the words painfully. He was probably tired of this kind of question. I was too, but I couldn't keep it from leaving my lips.

When he turned back to me, there was a smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that didn't reach his eyes as he approached me again in my bed. He put his knees on the mattress and his hands on the headboard where I was leaning, on either side of my head. His movements were slow, as if it was a ritual. I just watched him, wincing a little, as if there was nothing else to do. Well, there really wasn't.

“Not really. You are mine, Frankie. Nothing fairer than me having what's rightfully mine.”

There was no answer to that, other than a soft, tired gasp. As I stared into his eyes, I couldn't see in them any remnants of the person I once admired most. I could no longer recognize him. Especially when he kissed me harshly, as he did right then. I had to let his tongue in my mouth, because I already knew the consequences of trying to stop him, I was honestly too tired for that night. It only increased my disgust and hatred for him, each day more and more. Hatred for him and for myself. I was the helpless little whore he took whichever way and whenever he wanted.

Fortunately, it was over soon, and my father got to his feet, then he left after turning off the light. He left like that, like it was nothing. As if nothing had happened. As if it hadn't left me shattered and bleeding and dying inside, just like every other time, for the past seven years. As if he had no conscience.

“Damn you... I hope you die...” I wiped my face in the sheets, groping the bedside table in the dark until I found the cylindrical orange bottle, and took some pills from it. I was tired of feeling desperate and crying after his visits. It was no use. It didn't make the pain go away. It wouldn’t make anything right.


	2. Hazel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intended on posting this chap last monday but my anxiety fucked me up real good every day and I couldnt do it. When this fanfic used to be posted on orkut, my beta reader posted for me for this shit not to happen, but nowadays she isnt into MCR anymore lol Anyway, as you can see, this story is kinda heavy and slow, but I wrote it with all my heart. I hope you guys will be patient with me and with the fanfic itself e_e BTW, I introduced bert in this chapter, but I dont wanna make him be a total asshole G_G dont read him like this pls. Also, man its hard to translate such a long ass text. pls, excuse the mistakes. Im trying my best.

I was really spacing out when I entered school; so much that it took me a while to notice that the joke I heard right away was thrown at me. The first month at the new school was barely over, and I was already one of the targets of this kind of thing, because... why not? I was relatively below the average height for boys in the ninth grade, I always looked sick of everything and was always alone, since I was very socially awkward. From day zero, my very existence begged to make an entrance in the lower part of the high school caste with a neon sign blinking upon my head, saying “please bully me!”

I only threw an apathetic look at the boy who had said something about me, with no intention of doing anything. Sometimes I even glared at them, but it depended on my mood. That day, I didn’t want to fight. He was bigger than me (who wasn’t, Frank Iero? Speaking of which, half the girls in my class were taller than me), and he was there with his friends. Getting into a fight to end up in the nurse ward didn't seem worth it. I was a clueless guy who was always up to breaking things, but that was one of these days I just wanted to try to survive to the end of the night. So I just kept walking my way to my locker, ignoring them with all my might.

“Hey, kid, wrong building. Middle school is on the other block. Get out of here”. Someone threw a paper ball at my back.

I had noticed two guys sitting on the floor near the wall opposite to my locker as I walked over to it, but I didn’t bother to throw more than a glance. The guy who talked to me had a stubble and longish hair, in a dark shade of blonde or perhaps light brown. He was like a phony version of Kurt Cobain. By the way, he had that stupid air that seniors used to have around them. You know, the kind of air as if they thought they owned the school, and that the rest of us, mere mortals, should pay them respect or something. This idiotic idea was nurtured by the dumb lick-asses from lower grades. It was annoying. I just rolled my eyes.

“Do you have some pathological need to be a fucking asshole to strangers so early in the morning?” The guy sitting next to him spoke in a tired voice. Since I hadn’t really stopped to look properly, I didn’t notice much beyond the sharp pallor of his complexion, accentuated by the black of his clothes and hair. Unlike the other next to him, his hair was jet-black and reached his jaw.

“You're fucking pain in the ass all the fucking time, you know that?” The blond guy said, sounding angry, as I fumbled with the combination of the locker before I could possibly open the damn door.

“Well, _you’re_ a fucking jerk, Bert.” The other retaliated, while I put some books into the locker to get others then. “Goddammit, you can’t keep yourself from messing with people for one damn minute."

“And who the fuck are you, honey?” That Bert guy asked, sarcastically, drawing attention from everyone around them. “The patron saint of the broken, the beaten and the damned?”

I noticed, after a moment turning from the locker to my backpack, that I had left my science book at home. Rad.

“Oh, shove it. I’m not a motherfucking saint, but you nearly got kicked out from school last week for picking fights for no reason, so cut the bullshit already.”

“_You_ stop nagging at me for half a second, you fucking cunt!” Bert really didn’t give a shit about being discreet on this fight and spoke even louder.

_Jeez_... I raised my eyebrows into the locker, shoving everything I needed into the backpack. I may have shoved more things than I needed, but I just wanted to leave. I thought that at any moment they would start coming to blows with each other and it could end up falling on me.

However, what happened was that the dark-haired boy snorted and said, “Fuck you then, McCracken.” He got up and passed by me to enter a corridor to our left.

Bert stood up too, his expression not happy at all, and gave me a relatively ugly glare as he walked by me. I could have sworn he seemed to say “I’ll make you pay for this” to me with his gaze before following in another direction. _Ah that’s great. Wait, what did I do? _To recap: I got into school, got attacked for nothing, and now I was picked on because of something I didn’t even know what it was. _Rad, Frank. Your loser face gets them coming at you. _I closed my locker door and went to the bathroom in the same hallway that the black-haired boy had entered. I decided to put my so-called issue with that Bert guy aside. Maybe he hadn’t even made that face at me. Maybe I had imagined it. _That’s right. I’m making things up._

Resolute to give attention to more immediate and real problems, such as my angry bladder, I opened the bathroom door. I ran into the other boy there, leaning against the counter where the sinks were placed. He was smoking near the high windows, tapping his foot on the floor impatiently with an arm crossed across his chest. I didn’t pay him any mind while I entered the last cabin. When I left, he was still in the same spot, exactly where and how he was when I came in, except this time he was looking at me, his mouth a tight line, his expression intense and annoyed. I looked away, intending to ignore it, but it’s the kind of thing that you don’t have control over when you have anxiety. He made me nervous.

As I was walking away from the sink, after washing my hands, I ended up letting my gaze drift toward the boy, who was still staring back at me with narrowed eyes. Something compelled me to open my mouth as if to speak, but I just inhaled kind of hard and let it out like a random sigh. The other boy’s long face broke into a lopsided smile before he tossed the rest of his cigarette out the window, then he left. Just like this. I stood there with a blank face, feeling tense, just like most of the time I had to face other people. Only this time the sensation was a bit different because, instead of mocking me or just ignoring me like people usually did, he smiled. It may not have been exactly kind, but it definitely didn’t seem hostile.

This thought stayed on my mind for a few hours that day, but I didn’t even remember quite well on the next, because my head was a mess. The funny thing about taking meds to fix your head when it’s fucked up is that sometimes you get even more fucked up in other ways. I was kind of scatterbrained most of the time, for instance, among other things. Sometimes time passed like a blur, and I didn’t even realize what was happening around me. What called me back to reality were usually things like the fucktards who messed with me.

By the time I was leaving for home, one of them unzipped my backpack at the exit without my noticing, then everything inside fell to the floor in the hallway. The horde of people heading for the exit ran over everything. I had to try to pathetically stop them from trampling my stuff as I tried to get down to put it all together, until I got pissed and started kicking everything to the side of the hallway. Only then did I get my things together and shoved them in the backpack before I marched to the exit, foaming with anger, as I held my backpack to my side.

“Nice shirt”. Someone said close to me, and I turned to them to give my best deadly gaze, though the person didn’t look the least bit intimidated.

It was the bathroom boy. I honestly didn’t even remember what clothes I was wearing, so I had to look down. It was a shirt I had turned inside out and written with a Sharpie “i am a monster. i am a monster. i am a monster. i am a monster. I am a monster. i am a monster. hate me. destroy me.” because that’s the kind of thing I used to do sometimes.

“Are you pissed? What happened?”

“What do you want? Leave me alone!” I blurted out, annoyed, without stopping walking.

“Whoa. Hostile. What’s gotten into you?”

“The spirit of hatred! Everybody should just die and rot in this fucking hell!”

He fell behind after I said that. Although I no longer turned toward him, I felt his gaze on my back until I merged in the sea of people leaving school, and honestly, I couldn’t care less what he might be thinking.

_"I love you, Frankie... my Frankie”. Far from affectionate, he sounded disgustingly possessive. “I told you you’re a little man now and you shouldn’t cry anymore, didn’t I?”_

_His words were interrupted by my sobs, and my feeble attempts to break free from his arms. “I-I h-hate you”. I frowned at the effort to speak. “M-mom will m-make you st-stop d-doing this to me!” I almost choked on my own saliva, even more intensely trying to get out of that supposed embrace that felt more like a headlock._

_“Frankie, Frankie”. My dad sighed tiredly, letting go of me just enough so that he could face me straight on. “Do you like to make me keep repeating things to piss me off? How many times do I have to tell you your mom can’t do anything? And if you tell her, I’ll have to hurt her too...”_

_I went silent and winced against my own body as he reached out. I narrowed my eyes in fear, expecting that he would hit me, but that wasn’t what he did._

_“You said it hurts, didn’t you? It hurts when daddy puts it in you.” He smiled slightly and spoke as if telling a story, as he ran his hand over my belly, aching from a punch he had blown on me for me to be quiet. “Do you want your mommy to get hurt too? Do you want her to feel the same as you? Do you want her to cry? You are a little man. You must protect your mom. You must keep her from getting hurt.”_

_Pain. It was just pain that he caused me. Even that so-called caress on my belly only made the place hurt more. It was cold, as if he didn’t know how to do it right, or just… didn’t want to. Not one slap, punch or kick could hurt me like that. I admired him before. I believed he would protect me, and never let anything bad happen to me, like every other father did. He was my father! My father...! And now... well, now he was this monster. I didn’t want my mom to feel the same pain and fear._

_“I don’t want her to get hurt, daddy. Please, don’t hurt mommy” I whispered in such a small voice that even I almost couldn’t hear quite well, but he understood; then he leaned toward me and pressed his lips to my already red, bruised childlike lips._

_“Good boy. Now cooperate and take off these clothes, Frankie...”_

“Frank, get up! It’s time!” Jill said knocking on the door once.

I opened my eyes slowly, feeling the same oppression I had felt at the time when that was real. It made me hyperventilate for a moment. I hated to dream, for my dreams were almost never fabricated images. They were usually memories. I ended up feeling that the thing had just happened all over again and felt sick. As much as sometimes I thought I was used to it, I could never possibly get used to it after all. Who gets used to something like this? _Stop thinking about it. Just... stop! _I ended up jumping out of bed to get myself ready as quickly as possible, then I went downstairs with my backpack on my back, trying to ignore these things inside my head. I tried to go unnoticed, but it was in vain.

“Aren’t you having breakfast, Frank?” My mother appeared at the kitchen door, with that _morning annoyance face_ she had when she didn’t take her medicine.

_Fuck me, she already wakes up in a bad mood, man... _The worst thing was that it used to make me just too sad. I felt as if it was my fault. It must really suck to wake up to look at my face and remember she was my mother. I wasn’t just being dramatic. She made me feel that often. I couldn’t meet any of her expectations. Never. I shook my head at her and smiled as pleasantly as possible, but she entered the kitchen again, stamping her feet on the floor.

“Ready yet?” Jack stepped out, car keys in hand.

I sighed, feeling my stomach sink. _Rad. Rad. Rad. _“Well, I, uh...” I began, but the look on his face discouraged me from trying to escape. “Yep...” I stared at the floor, so we both went to the car without saying anything else.

Sometimes when he had business out of town and would be gone for a few days like that time, he would get on me before leaving, to give me hell as much as he could. He even liked to drive me to school. The thought of driving me there was ridiculous since it was less than a 10-minute walk from home. Not that he cared about my convenience or anything. He just really wanted to have some opportunity to get handsy on me without my mom around. So, he always took a long ride until he got to school.

As if to begin my private ritual, I sighed as he pulled the car out of the garage, feeling the annoyance throbbing inside me as I looked out the window; but it wasn’t just that. It was the feeling of helplessness and unfairness. If only I could cease to exist so I wouldn’t have to feel it... Just as I thought that, a weight landed on my left thigh. I didn’t even have to look to find out it was his hand. On an impulse, I pulled away as much as possible from his touch and looked at him in disgust, but he only pretended that nothing had happened, not even sparing a glance at me. Then I recoiled against the door and continued to stare apprehensively at the window until he put his hand on me again.

“Leave me right here. I can go walking the rest of the way.” I said, without thinking.

He growled at me, “Don’t be such a baby.”

“I wanna go on my own!” I almost yelled, without realizing.

His reaction was so fast that I only had time to feel the pain. He hit me in the face with a clenched fist before stopping the car in the middle of the street.

“Get out then, you little shit!” He snapped at me, unlocking the doors.

I was surprised and angry at the blow I took. It wasn’t just anger but hatred. I wanted to do the worst thing I could do to him, but nothing I thought would be bad enough to ease my feelings. I opened the car door and got out.

“Up your ass, you sick fuck!” I shouted before slamming the door and ran down the first street I saw. I only stopped when I was far away.

I knew that _I_ would be the one taking up my ass when he got back to Belleville. I just wasn’t always so good at taking it all without fighting back. It’s been almost seven years of having to cry, bleed, pretend, lie and suffer in hiding. I didn’t even know that I could handle all this pain. All I wanted was to be normal, to have normal parents, a normal life. Why did things have to be like this? I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, think of something else, anything to stop that burning sensation in my eyes. I took another deep breath and let it out slowly, so I started making my way to school, even though that way was longer. I was afraid he might be waiting for me on the main street.

The temperature was lower than normal for late September. I put my hands in my pockets because my fingertips were a little numb. The chilly autumn breeze was cool, but not when you forget your jacket in your molesting father’s car and you’re not wearing clothes that can warm you up enough. My face burned where it had been hit. I wondered if it was too red and how fast it would turn purple. _Probably I’ll have to walk all day with my head down so no one will notice... _My father wasn’t like that when I was a kid, but as I grew up, he got more and more violent.

I arrived at school with the intention of going straight to the bathroom to splash some water on my face, but I bumped into someone halfway. I looked up with the most unfriendly face I could make at the being who had the misfortune to bump into me, already expecting at least something like, “Look where you’re going, midget,” but the person gave me a familiar smile.

“Wow, what happened to you?” He stopped smiling when he saw my face.

I lowered my head again. For a moment there, I forgot I didn’t want anyone to see me. “It was nothing.”

“You’re doing such a motherfucking good job at hiding ‘nothing’, huh?” The guy sniffed in derision. “Who beat you up? I won’t take any cheap excuse like “it was an accident’, just so you know.”

I gave him an impatient wide-eyed look. _You_ _won’t take...? Arrogant bastard..._

“I said some shit to a guy on my way here, and he punched me. That’s it.” I said, looking around, really just wanting to leave.

He frowned at me as I looked up at him, but I hastily lowered my head again.

“‘That’s it’? This shit’s not looking good at all. It’s gonna turn purple in no time... Was it some random guy? Was he bullying you or something?”

_The fuck, why are you asking all these questions? Are you a cop?_

“No.” I rubbed a hand over the good side of my face. “It was a dumbass neighbor I don’t get along with. We always fight when we see each other.”

I finally managed to calm down, so I could look at him straight. I didn’t quite understand what the expression on his face meant, but I thought it bordered on distrust. This was new to me since no one cared much about my businesses, so they believed whatever shit I said. A little surprised, I tried to look as convincing as possible. Which wasn’t too hard, because I’d been lying about this kind of thing for so long that such a stupid little lie was nothing to me. So much so that he fell easily for it, as expected.

“Um... well, you better go see the nurse. There’s some blood in there.” He broadly pointed to the left side of my face.

I took my hand there automatically, touching my nose, which also hurt.

“Holy shit...” I squeaked.

It hurt and it wasn’t a little. Carefully I ran my hand over my nose and noticed that there were dried blood peels there. My touch brought the bleeding back again. _Rad… _I clicked my tongue, lifting my head in a stupid attempt to make the bleeding stop. It made the black-haired guy laugh.

“You’re weird.” His nasal voice made me look at him in confusion.

“Thanks. It’s the kindest offense I’ve ever received since I started studying here…” I grumbled, covering my nose with my hand.

“I didn’t mean it as an offense.” He shifted on his feet, making the sunlight coming through the window lighten his face, so I noticed that he had long, curved lashes framing greenish eyes. Hazel, in fact. They were beautiful eyes. “Being normal is overrated. Being weird is cool. Peculiarities make people unique.”

I felt my face heat up under his steady gaze and tried to hide it with the hand that was covering my nose. I hoped that he hadn’t realized that I blushed, but I saw a little smile appear in the corner of his lips when the I peeked a glance at him. What was I still doing there? Jesus, I really wanted to vanish into thin air.

“What’s your name again?”

My attention went from his eyes to his lips. They looped sideways a little as he spoke. It was... kind of cute even. _Cute... Wow, I’m going crazy... Am I really finding a guy_ _cute? _I pinched my nose to feel the pain and divert my attention. In fact, there was still some fucking blood running out.

“F-Frank...” I said, sounding very nasal.

“You better go, F-Frank. It doesn’t look too good.” He pointed to his nose and then turned to leave, but before he was gone, I spoke again.

“It’s just... Frank.” I lowered my hand. “But... um... what about... what about your name?”

He smiled again, but there was a hint of smugness in that smile.

“Gerard.” He said and then left the hall.


	3. Conventional Beauty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My friends said I skip a lot of words in this fanfiction, so I'm really sorry for that. I really try to pay double attention to that but it ends up happening one way or another.  
Also, I can't remember if I did that in the previous chapters, but I inserted a few lines from Frank's songs here and there (from his bands and solo projects) into the narration (is this the right word?). In this chapter, I directly quoted a few songs that I identified in the notes at the end.

I swapped the side of the cassette on the Walkman I inherited from my mom, and Radiohead bled from my earphones, because that was my mood of the day. Pretty much _I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here. _Then I flipped through the notebook, disinterestedly, until a scribble on one page caught my eye. _Write a lyric poem. Minimum of 130 words. Free theme. _It was due for the next class. Not that it had such a considerable weight on the bimester’s grade, but I was particularly slack in everything, so I needed every crumb I could squeeze out from any kind of work. _Oh, holy fucking shit. I totally forgot about it. _I even remembered writing it down and thinking “well... it can’t be that hard”, then I never opened that notebook again because I was a fucking loafer. To make matters worse, the next class was after lunch break. _I’m so screwed._

My problem wasn’t necessarily writing. I wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t the worst at it. Expressing what I had in my heart wasn’t so difficult. Emotions? Feelings? Ah, most of the time I was full of it, so much so that it overflowed. However, I didn’t want to horrify the teacher writing about my depressive and suicidal feelings. Not that I was an expert in teenage psyche, but I figured normal people my age would talk about… love and stuff, but life couldn’t grace me with that kind of futility, so I couldn’t write about this. The only feelings I knew were hatred and hopelessness. That’s all I had to talk about.

Before I could do anything, the lunch bell rang, indicating the end of the self-study period. Most of the time, I didn’t eat, so my stomach got used to this healthy diet of Coke at lunch. I went to the vending machine to buy a can of soda with the money my mother gave me behind my father’s back, before I went to try to find a place to sit in the backyard, with my battered notebook. There was a table near the door with a vacant seat, but I couldn’t even dream of going there because there were people there. You don’t force your presence in the school cliques. Either they identify with you and coopt you into it, or they eat you alive if you try to force your entrance. Other than that, you could only look from afar. Not that I was actually interested to begin with. Good assholes were assholes who stayed away from me.

With a sigh, I scanned over the backyard and found a smaller table from which a group of girls was standing up. I fled there, before someone else could sit. It seemed like everyone was looking at me, and I felt like I was dressed as a clown or something. I was aware that it was my damn anxiety talking, but it wasn’t something my whole brain understood, and it manifested in my half-shaking hands and the sighs I had to give because I couldn’t breathe properly. That was exactly the problem with getting out of my cave. _I should’ve gone to the bathroom... Tsk... No. I gotta ignore it, ignore! Ignore it, Frank!_

Before I actually wrote anything, I leafed through my notebook. I used this one to write down songs, but everything I wrote was like: _My head is killing me. I see faces when I sleep. He’s a coward and I need more time to get it across to you. I’ll fuck you the same _(1)_. _Or better yet:

_Yes, my eyes are bloodshot red_

_And thoughts of murder dance in my head_

_Yes, my eyes are burning red_

_I guess I should have blown my head off_

_I am my own bomb. I am my own slave_

_I hate my life now, and all of this is because of you_

_I wanna die, all right?_

_I hate myself_

_Is anyone listening? No_

_I wanna lay low, but you want a funeral_

_You are the lie, but I am the liar_

_I am the liar_

_You can all go fuck yourselves_

_All this poison that drips from my brain_

_Has given false hope, and it’s such a shame_

_I wanna die, all right?_

_I hate myself_

_I’m done_

_This is my last call_

_I’m done, this is my last call_

_Oh God, just take me away_

Out of curiosity, I counted the word(2) and the fact that it had 137 made me snort a giggle. _I can turn it in just like this... _But I also imagined the teacher sending me to the school counselor, afraid that I would commit a mass shooting — the new fashion in Uncle Sam’s land. Also, one of my songs was called “5th Period Massacre"(3). I had written this one a few months ago, after taking the final beating at my former school. _Just so you won’t forget us in high school, pansy, _that’s what they said in the empty hallway before punching my mouth, stomping my balls and kicking my stomach, making me puke gastric juice. It was after our fucking middle school graduation ceremony. Unfortunately, I ended up unconscious in the hospital and ruined my mother’s dinner plans. She was upset.

At the time, I was so pissed that I wrote this song about killing everyone in the school gym in my very hospital room. The truth was, I knew I was too much of a shitty ass chicken to take a gun and pull the trigger against these bastards, like I said in the song, but, hey, a boy can dream... Just kidding, okay? I didn’t have the guts to kill anyone. Probably.

As these thoughts crossed my mind, I flipped through the pages, more scribbled than the library desks, something hit me in the back of the head. It didn’t hurt, or anything, but that’s the kind of thing that pisses anyone off. I turned around automatically, looking for giggly people, which was how I identified bastards who bullied me remotely. It was a group at a distant table. The fact that they hit me with a ball of paper from so far away would only be impressive if half of the group wasn’t all athletes. They were always idiot savants — brilliant when it comes to sports and bullying the likes of Frank Iero, but dumber than a sack of hammers to anything else. I knew how much their primitive brains were delighted by the feeling of getting to us, so it was better to ignore it, but my middle finger went up high toward them. It made them laugh more. I reacted to their provocation because I was dumber than a sack of hammers too, but I was no savant at all to make up for it. Maybe I was a prodigy in doing shit. Haha, that’s right.

That’s when something cool spilling on my leg made me jump on my seat and look away from the assholes to see what it was. The can of Coke was turned over the table, and the soda had poured all over my notebook, running down to the edges of the wooden tabletop, dripping on my pants and to the polished concrete floors. The fucking perpetrator was leaving while laughing, just like the guys with him and those closest to my table. The damage wasn’t bigger because I lifted the notebook as quickly as possible, but the can was still full, and I scribbled too much when I wrote, so the ink blotted out fast.

“Fuck you!” I exploded, tossing the can toward the guy’s group, but it flew too far away from him before it fell spinning on the floor.

Obviously, it made people laugh even more. Man, how I wanted to kill them all. I closed my soaked-up notebook angrily, and I made as if to get up, but someone standing next to me made me fall back in the seat again. When I looked up, I saw... Yes, you’ve probably figured out who I saw. That guy, Gerard, was there, looking at my notebook, with a long face.

“What are you dumbasses laughing at?” He asked, looking around. “Is your mother juggling on a fucking tricycle dressed up as a clown here, by any chance?”

Whoa. If it was me saying it, a hand would come flying to slap me in the face, but no one retaliated him when he did it. Here and there, I saw expressions of anger, but soon after everyone had gone back to eating and talking, as if they hadn’t just seen me being publicly humiliated. Gerard, indifferent to them, pointed at the chair next to me. I just raised the palm of one hand as if to say, “do what you want”, and started running my hand over the tabletop to make the dark-colored liquid drain to the floor.

“That guy who did that” Gerard said. “is a friend of Bert’s. You know, the guy who was with me that day sitting in the hallway. I think they will bother you in the coming days. You gotta keep an eye for them.”

Yeah, I had gotten it right after all. Bert had made a “I’ll make you pay for this” face. “Why?” I asked indignantly.

Gerard sighed and leaned back against the chair, looking tired.

“Robert McCracken is a troubled person. He must be believing some crazy-ass story he himself made up in his own mind. These friends of his are a bag of dicks as well, who also just want an excuse to mess with others...” He shook his head, and I could see his gaze wander the courtyard.

“What did I do to provoke this?” I asked with a half-exasperated laugh.

“He thinks I stood up to you that day and that there’s something behind this.”

I gasped in disbelief. Oh yes, that was all I needed in my life. “You didn’t stand up to me or some shit. You ragged at him for what _he _did... You were more like... protecting him from himself or something...”

Gerard stared at me intently for about three seconds, before turning his face and looking around again, pursing his lips.

“Bert is nuts, I told you.” He ran a hand through his hair.

Yeah, that was the only explanation, and that was all I needed. Uncalled for trouble. I could see him across the courtyard talking to the boy who had knocked over my soda and two others. Still, Bert didn’t take his eyes off me and Gerard. He looked mean. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. I’ve seen too many ugly mugs all my life for me to let them get to me. But then something else caught my attention. “He thinks I stood up to you that day and that there’s something behind this”. Something behind? _Wait, I think I got the reason for all this..._

“Um...” I turned to Gerard, who looked back at me. “You two... are you... are both of you...?” I didn’t know how to ask this question, then I pointed at the two of them discreetly and made a gesture as if to say “together?”. Despite my awkwardness, he understood and laughed a bit.

“Not anymore...” Gerard emphasized, shaking his head nonchalantly. “But anyway... What's this?” He pointed to the soggy notebook.

I couldn’t tell if he changed the subject because he didn’t want to talk about it, or if it was just over for him. The information was a little shocking, honestly, and the sudden change in the subject stunned me a little, but when I looked at my notebook, the memory of the work made me forget that too quickly.

“Ah, it’s– I– I have to make a poem for the next class.” I put a hand over the Coca-Cola notebook instinctively.

“Poem?” He seemed interested. “What’s the theme?”

“It’s free.” I looked around, suddenly anxious again with that feeling that everybody was looking at me, but no one did; even Bert was gone.

“It’s the best kind of poem.” Gerard seemed too excited, and it made me raise an eyebrow. “Your creativity isn’t tied or held back to anything... Finished already?”

“Ah... No... These are... things I wrote before. I was seeing if I could recycle something, but it seems like I only write shit…” I laughed in despair.

Gerard held out his hand. I pulled back the notebook at myself instinctively, which made him frown, not quite understanding my defensive reaction.

“Oh, I... I’m not playing hard to get. I really think what I do is crap, so... I rather avoid the shame of letting others see...”

“Has anyone ever told you that what you do is shit?”

“No... I just know it is.”

“Ah, fuck it, man. How will you know if no one else has seen it? And even if someone tells you that, to each his own or some shit. It may be rubbish to you or someone else, but it can become someone else’s favorite poem. It may be the most beautiful thing someone has ever read.”

_Pfft. Yeah right. For sure. _“Ah, believe me... What I write will never be the most beautiful thing anyone has ever read.” I laughed because it was something I never dreamed of. All I wrote was about my father. How could something beautiful be born of this? “It’s all ugly and fucked-up... rotten...” _just like me._ “But I don’t write for people to think it’s beautiful. I do because... I can’t stand these things inside of me...”

I couldn’t see the expression on Gerard’s face as I turned my head toward the fence that separated the school grounds from the street. He said, after a while, “Poems like these are the best. They are the truest.”

_Does this guy really exist? _I thought as I finally turned to face him.

“I’m serious when I say you wouldn’t want to read them...”

“If I read and see nothing so bad, I’ll punch you in the face.” It didn’t sound like a serious threat, so I let out a breath of laughter. “Let me read. I am not a deity of poetry, but I can give you the honest opinion of someone who has been writing for a lifetime. You can choose to listen to what I have to say if you find it constructive and think that you can work with it, but also you can tell me to fuck off and go to hell for being a pretentious motherfucker. By the way, even if I thought it wasn’t good... it’s like I said, it could be the prettiest thing for someone else. I don’t know everything.”

I actually laughed, not quite understanding if he was a pretentious motherfucker, but above that, I was curious to see anything he might have written. He seemed to understand and really like it. I looked at my notebook and hesitated once more, but ended up sliding it to him, who opened it carefully because there was Coke dripping from it. For a moment he said nothing while he squinted, trying to read the jumble up and smeared scribblings. Meanwhile, I just turned the other way, moving my legs nervously. I had never shown my things to anyone. No one had ever bothered to talk to me long enough to get to that. I buried my face in my hands in regret.

“‘A true friend stabs you in the front’. I’ve heard that before... There are some notations here... Are they songs?” His voice sounded closer to my ear than I thought it would sound when he spoke. It made me cringe in reflex.

“Yep”, my voice sounded anxious.

“I want to hear them.”

I turned and noticed that he was leaning toward me, quite close, but he pulled away and looked back at the blurry pages as I looked forward again, even more nervous at the proximity. From this, I could see that Bert had returned and was staring at me with an expression smugger than before. I just ignored him and looked back at Gerard.

“No. It’s bad enough that you’re reading this, let alone letting you listen to them. I think I’d die... This notebook is proof enough of my failure.” I said, laughing slightly, but not from happiness, if you know what I mean. “My voice sucks too...”

“Fuck me, your self-esteem is such a disgrace”, he stared at me, tucking his hair behind his ears, looking frustrated. “I don’t see any failure. You have your own style. It’s pretty straightforward most of the time, but your metaphors are pretty nice... 'Your weaknesses, they vacation in my veins'(4)... I had about thirty interpretations about it, but I think it’s too personal for me to ask...”

It was. I took the medicine in my veins to cure myself from my wounds the weaknesses of other people made in me. I mentally replayed what I remembered writing there. My God, did I write things that gave out what I wrote about or to whom I wrote? I felt a ridiculous wave of heat in my back when he looked at me seriously. I just remembered vague things like that one he had read out loud.

“Well, the thing is, I have little time to do this work, and I can’t use anything I’ve written so far.” I muttered. “They’ll send me to the counselor if I hand in anything in this notebook... I need to write something… nice...”

“What do you think you have to write about? Love?” He chuckled, half mockingly.

“Maybe” I replied. “I don’t know…”

“If the teacher has assigned a free-themed work, you can write about anything you want. Poetry is not about things that are conventionally beautiful,” He put an elbow on a dry part of the table and put his face in his hand. “because beauty is a subjective thing.” He continued to flip through the notebook. “Love too, for example, was painted as the most perfect feeling that exists in the world... Love can even be beautiful, but it’s not like you find love and all the problems in your life are over. Oh, you found love, now everything is perfect in your life... That’s bullshit. It only happens in movies. In real life, love can hurt when you lose the person you love, or when they just don’t love you back. The worst is when you love each other, but sometimes both of you just aren’t compatible, and there are many variables in life that make people incompatible. It will hurt if you give up. It will hurt if you insist. Sometimes you just can’t give what the person you love needs for reasons that are bigger than you. Sometimes you’re just not the best for the person you love, and you have to learn to be selfless and to give up love to let the other person live. Though, altruism doesn’t make things any less painful. Love can make us touch heaven, but wander through hell... Understand? It’s as if people were blind to the bad part of it.”

“Just like they can’t see any beauty in death...” I said without thinking.

“Exactly!” Gerard exclaimed excitedly. “People usually see death as the most terrible thing that can happen, but they don’t see from another perspective. Death can bring peace... I mean, no one knows what happens next, but there’s the possibility that you can find peace and can rest from this shit that life can be... That you can... stop having to take meds for that stupid pain on your knee that you’ve felt all your life and that just never goes away,” he chuckled. “Or you’ll just stop crying at night, hiding from your parents because neither them, nor their love can save you from the chaos and hopelessness that dwell in you when... you have a broken soul. There are other things too... You know, I love some people, and I never wanted them to die, but suddenly if they get sick and start suffering... my love will have to understand that leaving is best for them. Thinking from this point of view, you can embrace death as a good thing. It’s part of the altruism I said before. Everything that begins has an end, and for something new to happen, something old has to end, right? But people fear the unknown and what goes beyond the ordinary. That is the problem. It is also conventionalism. This is boring as hell.”

This was a wider territory than my limited mind could scope. _Altruism... _I didn’t love anyone to the point of suffering with their deaths, maybe. I mean, I had some nice relatives in Texas, but... we weren’t very close. There was my mother... Yeah, I would suffer if she died, but maybe if she died, I would be free to die in peace. I didn’t like to think that because it sounded cold and selfish. Well, I had only thought about death from the perspective of my own bellybutton before. I thought of how much I wanted to die and free myself from the pain, anguish, suffering, everything. Was I really that selfish? Is that why it all made me feel so bad?

“Feeling these things makes you feel misunderstood and... alone sometimes.” I murmured almost as low as to get lost in the noise of the courtyard, but Gerard heard it because he seemed to be paying too much attention to me.

“Yeah... It does.” He gave another smile. “But let's get back to your problem...” he thought for a moment and leaned back in his chair. “Look... since you’re running out of time, I can give you something I wrote recently... Something the teacher hasn’t seen yet.”

“I can’t turn in something I didn’t do.” I said, almost outraged.

“It’s not like you’re going to claim it around as your own. It’s just a school paper.”

I knew I couldn’t afford to reject it, but I did. Somehow, he got me motivated with that monologue about love.

“No. I’ll... do it my way. If it gets me sent to the counselor, so be it.”

Gerard laughed. So I picked up my notebook and got up to go back to the classroom, because I needed dry paper, but he made me stop.

“Oh, Frank.” Gerard smiled. “One day, we’ll write a song together.”

It wasn’t a request. I ended up smiling too, very lightly, although I knew something like this would never happen.

“Okay, I guess”, I said before turning and running to my classroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] "Leviathan" by Frank's band Leathermouth  
[2] "My Lovenote Has Gone Flat" by Leathermouth too  
[3] "5th Period Massacre" by Leathermouth  
[4] "Veins! Veins!! Veins!!!", from Frank Iero and the Patience's album Parachutes.
> 
> Btw, the other day I saw a meme which said something like "in every frerard high school au fanfic they look like this" and there was a pic of the I'm Not Okay music video. So I thought I would be nice to mention that they actually look more like this in this fanfic:  
Frank: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/74/66/0c7466b401bae938869c44e81c270a45.jpg  
Gerard: https://images.kerrangcdn.com/MCR5_Header.jpg?auto=compress&fit=crop&w=1008&h=567
> 
> Gerard's hair looks something between this and the way it looks like in the Helena video, but I like this pic because it's how I picture his style. Frank doesnt have that stylish emo hair fom INO LOL well that's it! See ya!


	4. Trying to escape the inevitable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of the chap is a song by Pencey Prep. Also, I'll try to post a chapter every two days until I get to the part I'm anxious to get to lmao

“Hey there, mister,” my mom called me as I was trying to sneak upstairs coming home from school. “What are you–? What is this on your face?”

I made the mistake of turning to look at her, startled to have been caught in my attempt to go to my room unnoticed, as I had done in the previous days. She made her way across the room to look at me closely, touching my face with her fingertips, as if examining a patient in the hospital. It was the third day of that bruise’s existence and she only discovered it at that time. Her record was the time I got a hickey in the neck. She only noticed after five days, and still believed it was a bug bite. _This way you won’t get a star for being a good mom, Jill,_ I joked in my mind.

“It’s nothing, mom. I just hit myself”, I turned my head, trying to get out of there.

“You hit yourself or someone hit you?” She asked, seriously.

“No one hit me,” I muttered impatiently as I stared at the door. He would be there any minute, so I just wanted to lock myself in my room to at least feel safe for a few minutes before seeing his twit and getting my punishment for the episode in the car. “I got hit by a ball in PE because I was spacing out during volleyball. It was an accident.”

“Oh, Frank. You have to be more careful. What if you broke your nose?” She shook her head in aggravation. “Did you do anything about it?”

The only thing I did was to be angry when I accidentally hit the spot.

“Yeah, of course I did. I went to see the nurse right away.”

“You really are hopeless…” Jill complained. “By the way, what’s gotten into you?”

I frowned, a little impatiently. “What do you mean?”

“You look anxious.”

“Oh, I, uh, forgot to take the anxiety meds last night, so I’m really anxious...” I was desperate. “Actually... I think I’m sick.” My voice was cracking. “Don’t leave me alone...”

Jill frowned and gave me an odd look. “Are you feeling sick?” She almost laughed and spoke in that nurse tone I hated. “What are you feeling?”

“My... head hurts... and... my... stomach...”

She put her hand on my forehead and then shook her head.

“It’s because you don’t eat right, boy. I told you this vegetarian thing is not healthy. You already have gastritis... Go to your room, I’ll take you medicine. If you feel worse, tell your father. He will take you to the hospital.”

“Mom...” I whimpered.

“Oh, Frank. Sometimes, you act like a little child.” She sniffed, as she headed to the kitchen. “Go upstairs already”.

With no other choice, I took my jersey off and dropped it anywhere before throwing myself on the bed. Damn, why was I so impulsive sometimes? I hated when he touched me more than anything in this life, but I knew that fighting back was worse, so why didn’t I just wait for it to end? Now I could only wait until he came back home and punished me, so that I could learn to think before I spoke. _Dimwit. You fucking dimwit! Why don’t I die for once? _Suffering in anticipation would do no good, but it was beyond my control.

A moment later, Jill appeared in the room with a small cup with a white liquid, a pill and a glass of water. The only thing that was lacking for me to feel as if I was in the hospital was a little tray. Jill said I was going to be all right soon, then she left my room, just as she did with patients at work. As soon as she did it, I jumped to my feet and locked the door, pushing a chair in from of it, then I sat on the floor with my back on the bed. I stared at the ceiling, still feeling the weird taste of aluminum hydroxide, which I took for nothing.

After that, it wasn’t long before my father arrived. I could hear the living room door open, their distant voices, my mother leaving the house, starting the car, car leaving, steps on the stairs, steps in the corridor. Then, finally, the knock on the door.

_Knock. Knock._

“Open it, boy,” he said in his cold, low voice, that reverberated through the wood.

I just sat on the floor in anguish, trying to postpone something that would happen anytime soon. Trying to escape the inevitable. I could hear the sound of a key in the keyhole and, seconds later, it was unlocked, but the chair prevented it from opening.

“Open this shit!”

Without much of an alternative, I crawled over to the chair and pulled it away. It didn’t take him long to open the door harshly, and where I saw wood before, I could see his impassive face.

“So,” my dad said through his teeth as he closed the door softly, still looking at me. “You know it doesn’t work to try to rebel against me, Frankie.” He smiled, showing almost some kind of mercy as he walked over me. “It doesn’t work, _Frankie._” he emphasized the nickname I hated. “Got it?” And pulled my hair back.

I couldn’t hold back a grimace, but I pulled the air hard through my mouth before pressing my lips so my whine wouldn’t escape.

“Do you want me to apologize?” I asked, not really intending to do so if the answer was positive. Yep. I couldn’t seem to learn the lesson.

“I want you to respect me.” He pulled me by the hair, so that I got up, then threw me face down on my mattress.

I ended up thrashing my face on the side of the bed frame. It hurt a lot, but he didn’t even let me feel the pain properly, because he pulled me and made me face him, and all my resolve to be strong went down the drain, as it always did sooner or later.

“D-Dad...”

“Shut up.”

“No... Please...”

“Shut the fuck up. I came these 4 hours from Boston thinking about what I was going to do with you. And I will do. Aren’t you brave, Frankie? Can’t you scream? Well then, scream. You’re not gonna play with me, are you listening, you little shit?”

“I’m sorry...”

He shut me up with a punch to the guts. To no avail, I would try not to feel, but I would. It hurt a lot. It hurt my body and my soul, but there was nothing in my power that could stop it from happening. I could only try to force my mind to wander away, pretending it wasn’t happening indeed.

_It will be over soon. It will be over soon... Please, it has to be over soon..._

I woke up with pains all over my body, after sleeping very little. It was early — so early that the sun had not even risen completely. I didn’t want to get up. The orange flask on the bedside table was empty. Oh yes. I had forgotten to tell Jill that I was out of pills. Great. Since I hadn’t taken it in two days, I wondered how long the day would feel like. Then I noticed that I was squeezing something in my right hand. I moved it closer to the window from which a little light came in. I was holding a little tub of... foundation?

Probably that bastard had put it in my hand because there must have been a bruise on my face from the crash against the bed. I was supposed to try to disguise it. Man, it hurt like a bitch... I rolled over to the floor, not wanting to get up, but I didn’t want to stay between those sheets filled with blood and semen. He didn’t use lubricant when he wanted to punish me, so the situation there must be nasty, judging by the pain in my ass and my hips.

I lay there for a while, unwilling to change the sheets, feeling the usual emptiness, guilt, and humiliation that consumed my existence. I turned sideways slowly, staring into the darkness under the bed. Thinking and remembering... That was my motivation to get up. Anything to distract me from those images, sounds, smells in my head.

After that, I put on my pants that were lying on the floor and stood up. With my hand on my face, I lifted the sheet and saw the dried marks of my blood and his semen on the bedspread. Yeah, it was really nasty. It was tiring to have to be changing the bedding all the time, sneaking into the basement to wash it by hand, so my mom wouldn’t see it, before throwing it in the washing machine. Fortunately, Jill never asked why I changed the sheets every other day. I assumed she understood that as _a boy thing._ Those... night boners and that kind of thing. I didn’t have that, to be honest. I was really too broken.

After putting on new bedding, I went to the bathroom to check my state. In addition to the bruise of three days earlier, there was a smaller one on the cheekbone on the other side. There were ugly scratches on my waist and hips, apart from the bite marks. Some were old and some were new ones. He didn’t usually hurt me in very visible places like my face and arms, so as not to get attention, but when he got too unsteady, it just happened. When he did them on my arms, I had to wear long sleeves even in PE. I said I had allergies, and everyone bought my story. Some of the bruises left scars that spread over the parts of my body that the clothes covered. However, not all my scars were his doing. Some of them were from the bullying in middle school, the others were my doing. It had been a long time since the last time I did it, but the marks wouldn’t seem to ever be gone. I felt horrible when I saw them.

I sighed, still looking into the mirror. All I had left to do was take a shower and try to wash away the rottenness inside of me, but that shower didn’t solve anything. I still felt ill and empty. I crawled away from the shower, got dressed, and applied the foundation carefully on my cheek, trying to disguise the mark. It didn’t look good, but it was the best I could do, so fuck it. I really needed to run before I bumped into him around the house or before my mom got home from the hospital.

I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open during classes. I swear I struggled to stay awake, but around the third period, I stopped giving a single fuck, lowered my head, and slept. Actually, I tried, but the teacher told me to wake up, otherwise he would send me to the principal’s office, then I asked for a pass to go to the bathroom, wash my face, but the fuck I came back. I sat on one of the toilets, and the spirit immediately left my body. I fainted face-first in the stall and only woke up at break when people began to make noise outside the cubicle. It was my cue to leave. I headed toward my classroom to get my walkman and the lunch money. The last time I had eaten anything substantial was at lunch the day before. Or had it been two days before? Well, the thing was, I had to force some food into my body before I really started to feel bad.

When I was next to my classroom, I saw that damn Gerard in the hallway, talking to someone tall and very skinny. He handed something to that someone, who left shortly after. Drugs? I laughed. I had zero idea who that other guy was, but I didn’t care at all. I pulled the hood above my head and tried to get by unnoticed, but it didn’t work. Gerard did notice me and looked at me with a horrible face as I raised my head.

“Was it that neighbor again?” His voice was almost aggressive.

“None of your business. And don’t talk to me like this”, I muttered, pulling over the hood to cover my face, as I tried to walk on by him.

“Frank!” He came after me, and it pissed me off so much.

“What do you want? I told you it’s none of your business, dude. Leave me a–”

“What the hell. Why are you like this?”

The last people in my classroom went out giving us odd looks. Someone said “faggots!” as if it was a sneeze. It pissed me off even more because I knew what was going to happen. _Go ahead. Spread the word that you saw me with a gay guy. It will fucking help my reputation... _But, you know, I didn’t care at all.

“This kind of thing can’t keep on happening.” Gerard didn’t try to touch me but stepped in front of me to make me stop and look at him. “Talk to your parents, the school counselor, but you can’t–”

_Oh, what the fucking fuck... _I’ve never met in my life such a nosy person. I couldn’t take it. So, my answer was to lie without even thinking about it.

“It wasn’t my neighbor this time.” My right arm crossed my stomach and held my left, while I stared at the floor. “I... I’m really messed up and unlucky as shit. “Yesterday I was leaving school and some guys came out of nowhere.” I could only stand his gaze when I knew what to say. “They started beating me. And just as it started, it was over. I don’t know what happened. I– I don’t know. I can’t do anything when I don’t even know what’s going on!” My voice trembled, but it wasn’t because I was a great actor. It was because something like that had already happened to me in middle school. It all hurt all the time. Although I had lied about the day before, I could only think of the fear, disgust, and anger I always felt about the things that really happened. I couldn’t take it anymore.

The exasperation in Gerard’s expression broke into consternation when he whispered “shit” and approached me, but I didn’t want it, so I stepped back.

“Was it one of the guys with Bert?” There was anger in his voice.

Ah, goddammit. “No.”, I stared at the floor again. “I don’t know. But never mind... I just want to forget about it.”

“No. You out of your mind?! If it was Bert, it has to end at once. How are you gonna live until he gets tired of this shit?”

Gerard really believed my lies, like everyone else.

“Yesterday I left late and there was no one else in the way... That was it.” _Liar, liar, liar. _“Starting today I will leave at the right time... This won’t happen again...”

“I’ll talk to Bert.” Gerard seemed eerily decided.

“No. Don’t do that. We don’t even know if he has anything to do with this. I was busy taking a beating, so I didn’t even get to see anyone’s face...”

The thought that someone was going to take the blame for something they hadn’t done was awful. As much as a dipshit Bert seemed to be, it wasn’t fair. Only I didn’t know how to get out of this.

“I’ll just talk. I’m not going to fight him or accuse him, okay?” Gerard tried to reassure me. It sounded sincere, but I didn’t know if I should trust.

“It’s always been like this, pal. I was a punching bag in middle school... People always pestered me. It’s okay... I’m used to it.”

“It’s not okay and it doesn’t have to be normal, Frank! For fuck’s sake...!”

Since I didn’t know what face I could be making, I didn’t look up. Even so, I knew he kept looking at me until I felt the mood was getting really weird, so I lifted my chin. Gerard was really watching me in silence, his lips tight in a severe line. He tested taking a step forward. I didn’t pull away. He took another step. I stayed. Then he actually approached me.

“You don’t have to… go through these things alone, Frank.”

Although I thought, _but then who will be with me?,_ what I said was:

“Thank you. And sorry for... um, worrying you. I’ll... take better care of myself.”

He left off a small breath, pinching the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb, visibly frustrated, but no longer insisted.

“Anyway... come on. Let’s fix this makeup. It looks like shit. This foundation is too dark for your skin tone.”

“I know jack shit about this,” I followed behind because he walked off without giving me a chance to think. I was relieved that the other matter was over.

“Lucky for you, I know a little.” He still looked annoyed, so I didn’t say anything else, and the information was left hanging like that. How the heck he knew about make up I would never know, but I didn’t mind either way.

In the hallway leading to the seniors’ classrooms, he intercepted a brunette girl with low pigtails and a very bright red lipstick, called Lindsey, and asked her for foundation. She told him to get it in her bag in the classroom. I found this a little surprising. It may sound stupid and pitiful, but I didn’t know how friendships worked. I’d never had a friend after preschool. Seeing that kind of intimacy in which one person tells another that they can fish around their bags to get things was... enviable.

We walked into the classroom and he led me to the back, where her desk was, and rummaged about her backpack until he took out two little flasks in different shades of beige. I stood there, gawking at him as he handed me those things. Damn, what part of “I know jack shit about this” didn’t he understand?

“You really don’t know jack, right?” Gerard sounded as if he wanted to laugh.

Needless to say, I was relieved that he didn’t look angry anymore.

“Isn’t it kinda obvious...?” I said, pointing at the smudge on my face.

“Indeed...” he sniffed a laugh. Then Gerard opened the small flasks and put a few drops of foundation on the back of his hand. The way he mixed them up gently and looked at my face, probably to check the shade, showed that he really understood what he was doing. I just watched his fingers working. And, for some reason, I remembered that that hand had touched Bert McCracken. That hand had already touched a cock that wasn’t his owner’s. Just like my father. I felt disgusted.

“You all right?” Gerard asked, his hands stopping.

I blinked and shook my head, as if waking up from a daydream.

“Yeah, yeah...” _He’s not like my father... _“I was just... thinking of something else...” _Gerard’s not disgusting. He isn’t a bad person..._

“Huh” He sounded, and then brought his fingers close to my face.

My body automatically cringed.

“It’s okay... I won’t do anything.”

It wasn’t very encouraging, because they were just words. To make matters worse, I felt like he spoke in a tone that seemed to mean, “man, you’re weird”. Despite that, he was kind as he brought his hand to my face again, so I tried hard not to flinch again. When he touched my skin with the mixture of foundation on his fingers, I stared at the floor. But, yeah, he was kind even when he slid his fingers carefully, spreading that meek thing where it should be purple on the right side. That seemed to last forever. I couldn’t tell if he was taking his time or if I thought that because I was nervous. My back felt warm and my breathing was hard. I let it out slowly as he recoiled his fingers. Relieved maybe.

“Done. It looks much better. You can only notice that it’s makeup if you look close enough like this...”

He was really close. Funny that my body didn’t flinch again when Gerard reached to my face again. I mean, something seemed wrong, but I couldn’t say what. While I was thinking about it, I couldn’t react. I barely realized it until the knuckles of his index and middle finger caressed my cheek. My body allowed it, but that feeling that something was off kept screaming in my ears.

“Why are you doing this?” The question came out a little painfully.

“Doing what?”

“Being nice to me...”

Gerard stopped stroking me and frowned, “Do I need a reason?”

“Of course you do. People aren’t nice for no reason.”

“If people are mean for no reason, they can be nice for no reason.”

“I’ve never met anyone like this.”

Gerard chuckled a little skeptically. “You must have met a whole bunch of assholes in your life, huh?” There was not a shred of any fun in his voice though.

Well, it wasn’t a lie. I didn’t confirm it with words, but my attitude must have been confirmation enough. Gerard ran a hand through his hair, looking annoyed.

“There are people in this world who don’t just want to fuck you up, Frank. Beneath this Iron Maiden shirt, I have a heart that won’t look at you with a broken look on your face and walk on by you because it isn’t my problem. Well, it isn’t indeed... and it’s not like I don’t have a fuckton of trouble waiting for me on the corners of life, but that’s not a reason why I can’t reach out to you if you need help.”

What could I possibly answer to that? I had no idea what kind of problems could be waiting for him _on the corners of life,_ but I didn’t doubt him. Show me someone who has no problems. It was just crazy that he would go out of his way to help some little whorebag like me. His existence seemed almost surreal amid so many rotten people I’ve met—my parents, some of my other relatives, my schoolmates. Bumping into someone like that seemed just too good. I wanted to believe him, but I spent my whole life taking it up in the ass in the most varied ways. It was hard to believe anyone wanted to help, and even if I wanted to, I didn’t even know how he could help. I was in so much deep shit that I couldn’t even recognize the light.

As I thought this, I barely noticed that we stared at each other all this time until he leaned toward me. I knew that somewhere in my brain an alarm shrilled. Only it felt like it was in a lost place inside of me. Very far away. But it was enough for me to feel my whole body freeze up. It was bad. No, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, I didn’t have good experiences with physical contact. But... he didn’t have that menacing aura that came with every experience I’ve had. That was confusing. So confusing that I wasn’t sure why my heart was beating all strange in my chest, or why my breathing was so loud. Or was it my imagination?

Also, nor did I understand why I did nothing when Gerard cupped my face. I knew what would come next, and my only reaction was to hold on to the sleeve of his leather jacket over the Iron Maiden shirt, as if it were a small cry for help. I felt a huge wave of fear engulf my mind, but it clashed against the unfamiliar feeling brought on by his words. So, I did nothing to stop him from kissing me in the middle of the empty room.

For two seconds, I kept my eyes open in surprise, but then I closed them. Hell, I closed my eyes, unable to think straight! It wasn’t one of these cinematographic kisses. Maybe he even wanted to, but I locked my lips automatically, leaving no opening for it. It was so farfetched, because if it wasn’t for my dad, it would be my first kiss. And who would have thought my first kiss (technically) would be like this. I never imagined it would be with a... guy. A guy. Oh yes. Gerard was a man, just like my father was a man.

My body began to tremble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somebody told me this fanfic is kind of slow burnish. I found it funny since they kiss in the fucking third chapter (not couting the prologue) hahah what kind of slow burn is this?
> 
> Anyway, as always, forgive my typos, grammar, and orthography. Thank you for reading. Please, bear with me for a while longer lol g_g


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